Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - June 24th, 2022

This with the busy summer travel season already upon us and speaking of driving ahead, on this broadcast, we'll hear from the global vice president of Cadillac on the brands move away from gas powered vehicles, and the CEO of Contour Brands tells us how his company has largely skirted the supply chain troubles touching nearly every sector. Plus twenty three and me CEO and Wajitski stops by to discuss her company's key research on long COVID and a rough

stretch for its share price. All of that to come, We begin with this week's cover story and another struggling area of the market. Cryptocurrency, specifically the regulatory crackdown facing the industry's richest man, Cheng Peng Zhoo business we call him this. Max Chaffkin and Bloomberg News markets reporter Justina Lee co wrote the piece. They joined me in Bloomberg News senior markets reporter Katie Greifeld with more. Cz is the billionaire co founder of the world's biggest crypto exchange.

I think for a lot of people who haven't been paying attention to crypto might not really understand exactly how big finances. But you know, in twenty four hours, I think they usually say they processed sempty six billion dollars of transactions. And if you think about coin base as the exchange the most Americans are most familiar with, I mean, finance is like I think the last time I looked about forty times bigger than that. And that's because they

have a lot of volumes in crypto derivatives. And that's because you know, they're everywhere, and they're really the retail trader's favorite crypto exchange. And Max, you wanted to buy you met the man? What was he like in person? Because he is sort of this mysterious but very prolific figure. Well, yeah, as Justina is saying, I mean it Binance itself is popular and cz has this kind of like cult following. The crypto heads really like the company, They really like him.

I mean in person, he's very unassuming, right, He doesn't come off as a h kind of what you would think of as a normal crypto billionaire. He drives a normal, uh seaming car or is driven I probably should say h in a normal seeming car, and uh, you know

he's a slender, soft spoken and so on. But of course you know that this is all part of a pitch and what Justustina and I wrote about in the stories that Finance basically after years of really kind of behaving, you know, very aggressively in terms of regulation, in terms of its approach to the law, is very much trying to strike a new note, which is a note of we are as CZI told me in new By, where the stable guys, where where the adults in the room

and two people who follow this industry. I mean that is a bold claim to say the lead staple is a bit of a dirty word in crypto right now. Yeah, and as Justina could speak to, I mean this this is not a company known for a lot of stability. Okay, Justina, come on back in here. I'm not going to say the word because it's not allowed on radio, but I'll just say S coins. Okay, S coins. People who know

crypto know what I'm talking about here. What is finances relationship with these so called S coins and explain what they are? Yeah, I mean these S coins where we can call them all the coins are basically these smaller cryptocurrencies that got really big in the I O boom up two thousands seventeen. And the relationship with finances that one thing they realized in two thousand seventeen was that people didn't just want to trade the coin at a ethereum.

They wanted to trade you know, like hundreds of token you know that different people are pumping on the internet. And that's really how they were god baked back then. And so finance is interesting because it's kind of jurisdiction free. Max cz is kind of jurisdiction free as well. How is that? So? How is he able to do that? Well? Yeah, so the company was founded in China, but but pretty quickly after they're founded, they basically went on the move.

And what you have is this website finance dot com where most of the trading volume is that doesn't really have a home, and there isn't a clear country, there isn't a clear jurisdiction. And that is basically both a feature and a bug. It's a bug because it's it's a regulatory vulnerability. You now have um, you know, sort of regulators all over the world and especially in the

United States scrutinizing this company very closely. But it's a feature in that it basically allowed them to offer all of these unlicensed financial products in enormous volumes, you know, with very few repercussions. And so you know, and and that, and that's why this company and all lot of ways embodies the crypto industry itself, because of course crypto is this you know, borderless uh you know, nationless idea, right,

and then we have this borderless nationalist company. And what we're seeing now is is the potential for those ideas to maybe run into, you know, some of those old institutions that they were trying to displace. Justin as I mentioned, a lot of stuff you and Max uncovered new in this and and one part of that that I want to get to is the ownership structure of different finance arms throughout the world. What is finance US, How is it related to finance? And what did you learn about

this intricate web of different firms throughout the world? Right, So, binance US started in two thousand nineteen because US regulators wouldn't really have finance in the country, and so finance was light. You know, we'll start this brand new entity that's going to be independent and it's going to be more compliant. And that's sort of the way they've been operating, which is that they have this ambiguous entity Finance Stock Call. But you know, in some local jurisdiction they might open

a local company that might engage with regulators. And the question kind of behind all this is, you know, like who actually owns this cash cow. We don't know the parent company behind finance dot Com, but if you look at the local entities and a very important company called Finance Capital Management in British Virgin Islands, I think they're basically entirely owned by CZ which kind of suggests that

the company doesn't have any external shareholders. And it's quite interesting given that crypto has always been about the centralization, because at least in the financial sense finances, not the centralize at all. That was Bloomberg News Markets reporter Justina Lee and Business Week call him this Max Chafkin on this week's cover story, Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld with us there as well, coming up. Demand for Cadillac's new electric suv is through the roof. So what's the problem, the GM

brand's global vice president explains. Next, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stenovan from Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this year, Cadillac announced it would have an all electric portfolio by that starts with Lyric. It's the brand's first all electric vehicle. Orders for the model

opened up last month and quickly sold out. This past week, Bloomberg New Senior Markets reporter Katie Greifeld and I spoke with Cadillac's global vice president Rory Harvey about why some customers will have to wait an extra year for their new rides. I guess at the moment, there's just significant demand for the product. If you look at it, you know, we had the expectations that we set. We pulled the vehicle forward nine months, and you know, at the moment,

demand is exceeding our expectations. So we're looking at expanding our capacity. We're looking at gaining incremental manufacturing capacity, we're looking at gaining incremental components, and we've actually expanded our production through till the end of February significantly over the original plans. So at the moment, it's more a case of being able to keep up with the demand. There's not specific challenges necessarily reated to SEVI conductors, etcetera. It's

it's just a significant demand. Give us some numbers here about demand, yea, So we had about two hundred and fifty thou hand raisers. We've not disclosed our production numbers for model year twenty three, but suffice to say that it's sold out within four hours. The limited edition, the debut edition that we put on sale initially again sold out in just over ten minutes. So you know, there's just so many people that are excited about Cadillac coming

forward in terms of the all electric lyric. It's fantastic. It puts a smile on our face. You were talking about the demand. You saw two fifty hand raisers. Does that mean that doesn't mean deposits, right, that means expressions of interest. Yeah, exactly. So these are people that have said, you know, as details become more available, we'd like to be kept in contact with you, we'd like to get the extra details, etcetera. And then we open the order bank up on made the nineteenth and that was when

we sold out the first model. Yeah, okay, I don't work for a global car manufacturer. I don't work for a global car brand, so I could be wrong here, but it does seem like you guys are leaving money on the table here with this type of interest that it's sold out within four hours, one version selling out within ten minutes. You can't get it until I mean, what went wrong in the planning of of figuring out how much people would want this thing? So a couple

of comments really. Firstly, just it'll be twenty three model year that is sold out at the moment, so the twenty four model year will actually start during quarter one of next year. That's a great that's a great clarification, thank you. So you will be able to get a vehicle probably sometime in quarter two of next year. So it's about a year, you know, yeah, exactly, So you know that sort of puts in balance a little bit

in terms of the pricing. Obviously, we do look at price in good terms of the debut edition, we wanted to go out there with our best foot forward. We put a very attractive special price out there, just under sixty thou and in terms of the vehicles that are on sale now, it's just under sixty three thousand for the real world drive and sixty for the Oil Drive. So as always we will look at the competitive set that we wanted to really get a grip in the market.

We think that we've got a superb product and we want to get as many customers enjoying that products as possible. Do you anticipate having to delay that delivery target at this point? Not really. Um, you know, it's one of those ones. I hesitate a little bit because there is still uncertainty out there in terms of supply chain. I think, you know, I just heard some of the show talking about COVID. You know, there are still challenges in terms

of semi conductors. I would say that the industry is stabilizing overall from some of the speed bumps that have come up in the last couple of years. But at the moment, we've got a high degree of confidence. The next big test for us is August, where we really ramp up the production capacity of the lyric. But at the moment, I would say that we're confident in our ability to be able to deliver in line with the

estimates that we've given to customers. How do you ramp up production when supply chains are just snarled around the world. It's not just components that are going into these things, it's the raw materials that are going into batteries. Give me an idea rory our GM is handling that, and how Cadillac is handling that. Yes, so you know, we have a task force that's in place that meets multiple

times and not just every week, but every day. You know, we go to different suppliers, We look at second tier suppliers, we go direct to some of the second tier suppliers. We look at securing materials, securing components on a long term basis. You know, there's a whole stream of work that goes on in terms of doing that, And at the moment, I would say that we're in a much better position as a company that we were during the course of last year. Indeed, as most o EM's were

during the course of last year. And I would say the first couple of months of this year have really started to stabilize. But there is still pent up demand from COVID, from semi conductors, et cetera. So at the moment, there's still more demand that there is supplier product, which means that there's strong prices in the marketplace and relatively low incentives from manufacturers. What rory is the biggest bottleneck here?

If you were to say there's there's one component or one raw material that's just giving you the most trouble, what is it? Yeah, I'm not sure that there is. I think you know. The thing that that we've got is we've got your demand that is just absolutely massive, and you know, we're really positive and really pleased in terms of that. So you know, we're just looking now continuously as to how we can pull the leavers to be able to execute increased manufacturing capabilities and supply chain

capabilities to be able to meet that demork. Well, let me let me ask the question a different way. If there's one lever you could magically with a magic wand to Paul right now, which one would it be? It would probably be supply chain in terms of it. But it's a difficult one to say because you know, we've certainly got the ability to be able to deliver versus our business plan, and indeed we're increasing our supply over and above our business plans. So from that point of view,

I would say it's still positive. But you know, there are there are you know, we could always build more and we could always sell more. Rory, I would love to hear your thoughts on the competition because when you think ev most people in the US would think Tesla, And if you think about the target there, how do you surpass Tesla? Yeah, it's a it's a great question, you know, and lots of people ask the question in

terms of Tesla. I guess from my perspective, you know, I'm just really focused in terms of what we can do as Cadillac. You know, we've got some distinct advice intages I believe. You know, we've got a dealer network out there that can provide after sales coverage, that can provide support in the aftermarket. We've got a great coverage of dealers. Indeed, if you look at GM overall, I think that customers can get to a dealer within ten minutes.

So we think that with our product knowledge, with our history, with our pedigree, with our customer care ethos, with our footprint of distribution, that we can have a competitive advantage there. Rory, does it concern you at all if a customers on a waiting list for any v that they're going to say, you know, I'm not I'm not willing to wait a year for this. I want something sooner. I need something sooner, and they go to a competitor. Yeah, I mean it's

a good question. You know, we haven't seen that in terms of the debut edition as an example, in terms of people saying that you know that the time is too long to wait. Indeed, if you looked at many O E ms at the moment as an example, if a customer orders a high demand vehicle, there's going to be an extended lead time for customers to be able to get that vehicle. So, yes, it does concern me, but at the moment, I don't see it fundamentally as

a big issue. Rory, give us an idea of what you're doing, what Cadillac is doing, what GM is doing behind the scenes right now in order to have that portfolio of Cadillac vehicles be all electric by yeah, So you know, if you looked at it, we've now launched our last ice vehicle. Literally, if you go back a few weeks now, we announced the Cadillac Escalade V. I

guess it was a derivative within the Escalade family. But from this point forward, every vehicle that we will launch will be an ev We literally teased Celestic, which will be an ultra luxury vehicle as an example. So we put a few schematics of that vehicle out there in the marketplace that we're looking forward to break in some news on that in the sort of July September time scale. So everything really is focused on EVS from a Cadillac

perspective now and into the future. Our thanks to Rory Harvey, he's global vice president of Cadillac. Bloomberg Skinny Gradveld once again taking part in that interview. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, Why Genetics Company twenty three and me looked into long COVID and what women in particular need to know about its effect. CEO and Wijetski is up next.

This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg Eleve in Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine to the country, Sirius XM Chamber one nine and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinnovan on Bloomberg Radio, our next guest in her company were featured in a Business

Week cover story back in November. It was all about how twenty three and Me wants to use customers genetic data to help fight cancer. Now, the firm best known for at home DNA test is taking on long COVID as well. Carol and I caught up with co founder and CEO and Wajitski, and we began by asking the one time hedge fund analyst about the company's share price

down roughly year to date. Coming from the Wall Street world and now being the CEO of a public re traded company, it is, you know, it's it's interesting that you know twenty three continues to execute um I'm incredibly proud of the team. We continue to move programs through the pipeline UM, you know, make drug discovery, UM, continue to engage our customers on you know, genomic medicine and

where we can go with that. We recently acquired a company called Lemonade, so it gives us the ability to offer care to our customers both through pharmacy as well as to access to care providers. So the company has just continued to execute. But obviously market conditions are are challenging. So we're very mindful of the fact that market conditions

have changed and the future is more uncertain. So we take all that into consideration now and we want to talk too more about what you're doing because I feel like we just came back from a conference. It was all about the financial world. I was involved in a panel that specifically about what the future of money is, reimagining it, and I think when it comes to things like financial services and certainly health care, it does feel like we're on the cusp of doing things so different,

especially when it comes to treatment modalities. Having said that, I just want to go back to the market environment because we're asking all of our leaders this. I mean, when you do have a stock that is down more than six I mean, what kind of pressure does that put on you and your team who are working on

things that are going to take some time. Yeah, you know, I was investing back in sort of when the market crash back in two thousand um, you know, two thousand one UM, and it took a long time to recover.

And I think that there's the way we approach this is really about making sure that we're doing things that are going to you know, see value within near term and probably have to you know, minimize some of the projects that are going to focus on some of the longer term initiatives, but really focus on priorities, and you know, also making sure that you're using cash and the wisest way, so all kinds of things that we start to you know, reevaluate.

But it's really about making sure that you we you know, we have a very strong cash balancie right now and making sure that we you know, extend that runway as long as possible, and making sure that all the programs

that we're focused on are really essential. And I want to get to the research that you've recently found it twenty three and me some really interesting stuff when it comes to long COVID, and I think, you know, we're at the point in their pandemic where Caroline I travel At some points, I felt like I was the only one wearing a mask on some of those flights in the airport and even at this conference that we were at.

But long COVID did have my mask gone back, you did, Carol did too, Yeah, but but but we were it was like, yeah, that was it. But I do want to know and what you found when it comes to long COVID, because that's something that I think about a lot and one of the reasons why I don't want to get COVID. Yeah. So there's a couple of things

that are really interesting thing for me about this. So first and foremost, you know, the way part of what we conceptualized when we started twenty three and me, and it goes back to some of your earlier questions, was really a whole new way of doing research, Like how is it that you can have millions and millions of people engaged on a single platform with phenotypic data, with the genetic and formation and be able to go back to them very quickly, easily ask more questions and make

insights and so this long COVID research that we've done is really a good example of how the twenty three model works, that we could put out a survey to our customers, collect a lot of information and make really interesting and meaningful findings. So one of the things a couple of things here that are are interesting, and again being female, it's obviously top of my mind. Over seventy eight percent of those diagnosed with long COVID were women,

clearly disproportionately impacting women. People with depression diagnosed depression and anxiety are more than twice as likely to have it,

so twice increasing their risk um. Half of those people are, you know, having persistent symptoms for over six months, and about ten percent or having it for over a year, so it's you know, all this data comes from about a hundred thousand customers who reported that they had COVID, over twenty six thousand that said that they had long COVID, So we have a lot of data here and it's

definitely concerning that it's again impact so many women. Anxiety being a risk factor is obviously quite interesting to to follow up further on, and the fact that it's supersistent, so similar to you and what you just said. I was recently at Lego Land and nobody was wearing a mask but me, and I am I'm sticking to my mask. Yeah, I'd wear this duck mask ground and and all our listeners. And this guy at the airport was like, what is that mask? And I had to explain, this thing is

actually pretty comfortable. It's five. I love it. I love it. No, I think it's just it's just clear that there's you know, I there's clear like long term impacts here and so understanding it. There's a lot more to be followed up on with respect to long COVID. That was in Wijetski, the co founder and CEO of twenty three in me. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, financial

services are set to enter a new era. We'll head to the Lone Star State to discuss the next big fintech breakthrough at the b n Y Melon Pershing Insight Conference. B n Y Melon Chief Information Officer Rob Nagapon joins us. On the other side, This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this month, Carol and I traveled to Grapevine, Texas to attend the b n

Y Melon Pershing Insight Conference. Those in attendance were of course talking markets and the outlook on the heels of the federal reserves first seventy five basis point rate hike since also on the agenda technology and to help us understand the massive impact it's having on the financial services business. We spoke with Rob Nagapon. He's chief information officer at b n Y Melon Pershing, and here he explains why the advisory industry is going Digital technology drives everyone up

our business. It used to be thought like the business is actually using the technology, but I wanted to say being at that the technology actually drives the business. As you could say, and you said, all these folks here, they're all showcasing technology even though there's a business behind it. That's the one that drives them. And we're excited and being be and my Melon Pershing, we are also showcasing a lot of advancements in what we're doing with technology. So, well,

what's the continued digital disruption impact on the advisory world. Well, the pandemic actually accelerated the adoption of digital, but I think there's more room for that. There's more digital adoption needs to happen in the advisory space because there is an expectation from the investor that it's a seven by twenty four any time any place. I want to be

in touch with the advisor and get the service. That was not the case maybe three years ago, but now the expectation is like that because every other businesses has changed. You know, there's a contact less everything. I mean, you walk through this island, this thing is like scan the QR code. Ye, same thing. I'm going to embarrass that I paper here because it feels so Yesterday Sweeney hosted Bloomberg Markets had no paper. The paper people. It's a

digital transformation for Bloomberg Radio. It is. Well, I'm wondering how this trickles down to the client experience. Experience is the king right now, It's the play. You know, everything we do, it's all about experiences. People love that experiences that they get and they want to do business with you. So even though the term experience is very broad, it's all about applying technology to give that experience the right experience that they really want to use and come back

again and again. One thing I think about, and I asked this of my crypto panel, that it wasn't a crypto panel, was about how do you reimagine money? The crypto was a big part of it, but we talked so much about crypto and understandably sad and I felt like I get it now a little bit more. But I mean, how do you think about in your world that you know you need to be saying to people, Okay in five years, ten years. I mean, this may not be a thing now, but it will be down

the road. I always think about the uberization of the world. I think it applies to so much, meaning digital currency, using payments real time. So the cash and the checks is not going to be used. If you really look at the payment, that US payment is a little bit backward. I don't want to say that, but I'm saying it compared to the rest of the world, they have gone

into instant payments and everything. So what I think is in that space that you've mentioned about the cash and the digital currency in the crypto, I'm saying everything is going to be digital in the future. How do I pay you? It's going to be digital? It's just cannot be that the peer to peer is cannot be done. You know, I know there are when moos and zels and other things are there, but it's going to be even more prominent in terms of the payment that's going

to happen. I'd like to ask people like you when I have the chance, because they're thinking about technology day in, day out, probably when you're sleeper thinking about it too, what things look like five years I think that was a no. Well, when I sleep, I got to sleep. I mean hopefully hopefully you're not having nightmares. Okay, but I wonder you you know, let's say we're sitting here five years from now at Insight, what's the technology that's

going to be showcased. Well, certainly there's a there's a things that's going on with metavers. We're going to be in the metaverse. Yes, it's possible that could happen, but I think people are trying to figure this out. What is the exact use case, and especially in the world and finance, how it's going to play. We're actually showing something as well, um in one of our boots on the metaverse Web three oh is going to be implemented.

Is like you own the data. You want to own and control who you give it to and how that has been used. What does that mean wrong? Owning your own data in the financial space, I get what it means. Maybe in the retail space it needs to maybe a social media identity. That makes sense? Yeah, so what right? Exactly? So let me let me give you an example. Let's say you go to a doctor's and you've got about

fifty seconds. Yeah, you go to a doctor's office. What they give They give you a form and a pale and ask you to sit there and fill up a phone. Why you want to do that? That's your data. You wanted to have that data in your wallet. You wanted to go to the doctor's office and it's click a button and the data goes there. I don't want to fill up the phone. That is your data, and you don't want the doctor office to use it for some of the purposes besides just serving you. Similarly, in the

finance data is yours. You control the data and why they use it, where they use it, and you want to track how they're using it. Okay, how soon do we get there? It's it's it's happening, it's working. People are working it in in parts probably you know, I would say a couple of years before everything else good moves, maybe even more. It's a complicated topic, um, but people are actively working on it. That was Rob Nagapon, the chief information officer at b and Y Melon Pershing. Now.

During our broadcast from Insight, we also spoke with Ainsley Simmons. She's the president of Pershing Acts. It's the unit that's dedicated to fintech development within BNY Melon, and here she breaks down what her team is doing to provide clients with wealth solutions. May for the digital age. We're building what's called an advisory platform, which is all the tools and advisor needs to provide a client advice about you know, their financial plan, their portfolio, taxes, you know, anything that

really will help and an investor make good decisions. What specifically were you hearing from investors from your customers that made you say we need to develop this thing internally, we need to build it. And what feedback did they give you about how to design it? Yeah, So the really interesting statistic in the market is advisors spend their time with clients and behind the computer pushing buttons. It sounds like doctors. No, and that's insane, right, and it

is today's day and age. Why do financial advisors have to be spending so much time tethered to their desk? And so our clients were like, do you have a way to help make us more efficient? And the truth of the matter is there is no way today. So we decided to set up this division and build this product with our clients guiding us by the way and helping us prioritize what should come first in their core five with the sole purpose of saving them time so

they can help more people. You know what that means, they'll grow their business. So let's top of mind in terms of how you prioritize what you need to have on this platform resolutely. So the platform itself is going to be innovation, right. Never before have you been able to connect this application to that application to that application, kind of think like g suite, you know Google Suite, right,

where each product could be itself. But like good things happen if you start to use more than one product. So the platform itself is our first priority. It's really complicated, it's really hard, but that's where we're starting. And then we'll put applications on it that advisors need. They're not all going to be there to start, and we've been really clear about that. How are you thinking about this

from a hardware perspective? It's cloud based, so does that mean that equally people are able to access it equally? And you know, to the fullest extent, whether they're on a PC, whether they're on a mache. Most advisors are a pcn tablet, right, they don't go they're not usually working with clients on a phone. Right. So as long as we're doing what's called responsive design, and it will be able to fit to any device type, we should be fine. I think really importantly, it has to be secure.

It has to be safe. So that's where the Bank New York Melon comes in. What about working from home? Yeah, we can tell that. Because this is going to be web based, you can do it from anywhere. It's it's that I said before you sat down. I we loved reading about your background. You worked in beer, you worked its soup soup, and then fintech right right, and you have your own startup. So how do you think about though, like the end consumer right what they need? And I

can't tell you. The people I talked to like love technology, but mana drives me crazy. It complicates things about it. And if you think about your money, you're probably logging into your bank somewhere advisors what site? You know, maybe you're are here for a one case somewhere else. And one thing we're really trying to do with this effort is create one end investor site that our clients could offer.

And you know, that was really interesting. In our second advisory board meeting, they said, this thing's got to have an end investor site because what we have today sucks. So and they were they literally said that. So I was like, all right, if that's what you want, that's what you get. So we're going to build that. Well

how quickly? Yeah, so fast is the way of the world, right So, but this is a very hard built So we're going to put a private beta out towards the end of year early next year, get some people on it giving us feedback. Then we'll start adding apps and and releasing after that. So that's what we're like laser focused on. I've been dying to ask you because you're in the fintech space, and the fintech is so hot right now, especially getting so much investment from venture capitalists.

When you look out across the landscape right now, what what is promising fintech that you see? Because I always think back to what somebody said to me, you know, the most innovative fintech we've seen is the A T M. Yeah, that's probably true. You know. I think what's really happening in payments right now is going to sort of speed money, and that's cool. And you know, we heard this morning a ton about crypto and digital assets and and that's also cool. Um. You know, I personally think that there

will be a lot of consolidation. They can't keep going making these microw fintech apps. We're gonna have to start building building bigger experiences. And I actually think pershing X is sort of at the cutting edge of that, right because we can't just keep making things smaller and smaller and expecting consumers to log into all these places, right

it doesn't make sense. It's like, okay, maybe not apples to apples, but I think about streaming now, like it's all become just multiple apps and it's just too much stuff all over. There's too much stuff, and you're starting to see the innovation. I turned my TV on the other day, and i'd start, You're they're starting to aggregate all of that into these more enterprise like collective views, and that's exactly what we're trying to do here. That

was Ainsley Simmons. She's the president of Pershing X Well. That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Tim Stanninbeck. Carol Master is out this week ahead. In our next hour, the CEO of Contour Brands breaks down his strategy for avoiding supply chain snarls and why the NBA is eyeing Africa as its next major market for both fans and on court talent. End Up next, more from b n Y mel Inshing Insight two. We're going to hear from

the CEO and CEO in just a moment. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg Business Week with Cairol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim

Stinovik on Bloomberg Radio. Lots to come in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a conversation with Contour Brand CEO Scott Baxter on avoiding supply chain trouble and the health of the American consumer, Plus why the NBA is looking to Africa for growth in its fan base and its talent pipeline, and entrepreneurial insights for the underrepresented from the CEO of Genius Guild.

First up this hour, two executives who are excited to get back into the office B and Y Melon Perishing CEO Jim Crowley and Chief operating Officer Emily Losser. They joined our broadcast from b n YML and Pershing Insight. You have certainly focused on future of work and how we can have a bit of a hybrid, but I think also just the focus on digital and so we're really focused on our interfaces, our experiences, bringing consumer grade technology to our investors, our advisors. So that's a lot

of what we're featuring here at the conference. I know that being back comes with a host of challenges as well, as the world does open up and people start to travel more. We're in an inflationary environment right now, and I'm wondering from your perspective, how you're dealing with those challenges when you look across the macroeconomic landscape. What's top of mind for you? Yeah, what's up my mind? Tim,

Thanks for the question of a couple of things. One UM, I've been on the road, like I think many other executives for the less several months, visiting offices um to encourage people to come back into the office. First of all, I think we're in this new environment. Are they coming

back and they are coming back slowly okay. And the way that I think about it, Timm and Carroll is I think the value proposition for an employee to want to come back to the office has to be greater than the value that they feel and believe from working from home. And that is the magic that we have

to create. We have to be able to demonstrate that there's real value to have a fractional interaction and to feel the culture and to no one understand what it's like to to learn and understand what we all can do as as a company together. So I do think we're better together than being a far apart. One thing I wanted to ask you, and I was from a far watching you interview the former CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nui who I've talked to it. She's pretty incredible and

she's now helping other companies. Right when it comes to leadership, leadership has been tested in a big way in the last couple of years. It's going to continue to be tested as we moved to a new normal. Um, tell us a bit about the conversation and which up to out in terms of her advice. Maybe, yeah, um, so many great nuggets. One of the things that she talks about is the future of work and the importance of flexibilities.

So while I agree with Jim being back together feel so good and it's a really important part of developing the fabric of our organizations, there is also a critical notion of allowing for flexibility, allowing for the families of our employees to really be more front and center in terms of how we think about the future of work, so that people can kind of lean into their careers while not pushing having to push their families aside, and not having to make so many of those hard choices.

You know what I love about that? Yeah? I want to I just want to jump in because I Emily, I love I love that I've actually used some, Yeah, especially especially this week. And you know what's great is I'm gonna you know, a lot of my friends have

young kids, and it's the end of the year. They're going and catching end of the year school plays and end of the year graduations right now, and there seems to be this new acceptance in the professional world that these types of things are are okay to do as long as you do you get your work done. And Emily, I wasn't seeing this, you know, before the pandemic. Does this shift permanent? I hope it is. I hope it is, and I think it will be. I think it has

to be. Um. Certainly, as we've seen the labor market titan, it is incumbent on employers to make sure that we are really providing the experiences for the people who work for us that want they make them want to stay in the workforce. Um, So I think it has to be.

You know, one of the things that Indra has observed in her time having been retired post pandemic is she's you know, driving around and seeing at three o'clock all these parents meeting their kids off the bus and they're just taking ten minutes out of their day working from home to go greet their kids as they come home from school. And what a special moment that previously no one in the professional world really had. It almost wasn't acceptable.

It wasn't It wasn't acceptable, especially for women, especially for women. Sorry, go ahead, Now it's an uraged yeah, and not what is encouraged. And now everyone is understanding of what that means, what this new hybrid work environment means. Well, this is important. Is I think about all of the folks here who are thinking about their staffing for the future, right and what they need to be thinking about. And I'm assuming

that this is why they're trying to figure out. Do I need to continue to have to offer this flexibility going forward to attract that new breed, younger generation of finance professionals. Absolutely, yeah, you absolutely have to. In fact, I talked about it on the main stage earlier today, the idea of what we need to do to keep great talent, what we need to do to coach great talent,

what we need to do attract great talent. And at that point, exactly, we're not going to be able to attract great talent to our organization or to any work team unless we have that flexibility built in. Yeah, I was just gonna say, we spent a lot of time listening to our employees and really listening to what's important to them. And these are the things that really make a huge moment. I mean it's ten minutes and it

really changes the day. You know, they always say about a conversations, those moments where you don't constantly think about what you're gonna ask next, but just let it breathe and listen, and listening is just so powerful. I do have to ask you, though, an extreme volatility that we've seen, are we being reminded in this environment? I'm here, I'm curious what you're hearing from everybody that you know rethinking that you know, volatility, A bit of it, a fair

amount of it is normal, like in our environment. It is normal, but not what many of the people in our workforce today have ever experienced. All Right, So this hasn't been the case for the less tensh years, and now we haven't and it's I think really important that we have. Again, It's one of the reasons why being in the office sometimes you have the opportunity to bring young talent and experienced talent together to start of work

through the challenges of volatility. It's a good reminder. I mean, this is the third year in a row where we've had really outstanding moments where we've said, Wow, you know this, this volatility feels incredible, but then at that point it no longer is our Thanks to being why Melon Perishing, CEO Jim Crowley and CEO Emily Schloss joining us from INSIGHTO coming up. A US apparel maker is ready for more inflation, and it knows how to avoid supply chain pain.

Contour Brands is the company behind Wrangler and Lee Jeans. The CEO Scott Baxter, stops by next, This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovy from Bloomberg Radio. As Retailer's Way had a deal with soaring prices and inventory uncertainty, one US apparel maker looks to have a sound strategy in place. I recently sat down with Scott Baxter. He's the president and CEO of Contour Brands. They're the owner of Wrangler

and Lee Jeans. It's the roughly one point billion dollar company that back in twenty nineteen was spun off from VF Corporation. We touched on supply chain concerns, inflation, the possibility of recession, and more. I started though, by getting his thoughts on the macro economic environment. You know, it's been a big pendulum swing, right, So the pandemic has been really interesting. We're seeing the echoes of that. All of the pent up demand that we had all came

at one time. I think the thing that we're trying to think about is take a long term view. So we're thinking about the stability of the consumer over time as they go from you know, a really slow purchasing period the beginning of the pandemic, and then that big ramp up here this last year, and then all of the stuff that's happened to drive up prices, right, So all the folks that needed additional trucking, you know, all the transitory, all the shipping, the delays that the ports,

all that kind of happened at one time. So now we're thinking that we're going to start moving into what we would call traditional buying patterns going forward. How much have your prices had to go up as a result of all of those things that you just mentioned. So we've had to do some select price increases, but we've been very strategic about it, you know, keeping the consumer in mind and doing everything that we can to run a really good business and make sure we keep our

costs down too. So we've been very conscientious and very select and how we've done it. But give me an idea of percentagealize how much you have to raise prices or margins have been hit. Yeah, we haven't shared that externally, you know. So so we just finished our first quarter call and so we haven't We didn't talk about that on the call. So how should investors think about it? I think they should think about the fact that, you know, we run a really good business. We have a really

sophisticated supply chain. One of the most important things that Contour brands for us as we own almost of our supply chain as an apparel company. We're one of the very few, if one of the only, that has a significant piece of their supply chain in North America. We have plants in Mexico and Hondoras. It allows us to control, you know, our supply chain. And if you think about that product, that product doesn't have to hit the ocean, it doesn't have to go on a freighter. And it

also doesn't have to go to the ports. It just gets made in South South America and ship right across the border to US. To what extent has that put you at a competitive advantage against competitors who who do actually make these this stuff overseas? Yeah, we think significant for a couple of reasons, not maybe just what everybody else thinks, but we think it's strategic in the fact that, you know, as consumer tastes change, we have a much shorter lead time, so we can make things much quicker.

You know, when you go overseas and you source, there's a much longer tail. So as taste change, we can move quicker, we can get product in quicker, and we control our own destiny, so we control and we're the only one in our own factories, right, So as you go overseas, you know, and you work with different factory partners, they might have multiple other vendors in their factories. Well, in our factories, as you can imagine, rankleringly are the

only customers, so they get all of the attention. Okay, speaking of consumer tastes, our consumers doing, you know, we think the consumer is doing pretty well. You know, Um, there's a real shift to casual product as people come back to work. You know, we just came back to work about a month ago at our company, and people have either had to buy new clothes because they don't think their current clothes are fashionable enough, out of date.

The last couple of years, they've exercised a ton and lost some weight, maybe they've actually gotten a little bit bigger. So there's multiple reasons that people have had to buy. But also it's become a casual trend. Right people are now coming back to the office and there were in denim, there were in casual pants. Uh, just a much different dress code and that plays well for us. What about

the health of the consumer? You know, we think from the categories that we play, and so remember we're at a very nice price point, so you can buy a pair of our genes for and you can buy a pair of our genes for a We run up and down the value chain, so we think that you know, the higher end consumer is doing really well and we offer a really compelling value at that mid tier mass channel. Are you seeing any changes or any softness as you

look at that spectrum from you, Yeah, we haven't. We haven't commented on that, you know here recently since the end of our call, but you know, right now, we think the consumer is still in pretty good shape. And do you expect the consumer to remain in good shape? We think as we come through this, we think the consumer is going to be in really good shape. We think there's an opportunity for people to go back to work. We think that there's plenty of opportunity for people to

get back out there as stimulus ends. There's been a lot of talk about stimulus, right We think there's plenty of opportunity for employment as people come back off stimless and when they do, they'll be working. They're gonna need a peril, They're gonna need work clothes for that when they come out, So we think that could be a positive impact. We've heard a lot of executives and a lot of analysts to being concerned about a recession in

this year. Some analysts are even saying we're in one right now, but some predicting we'll see where do you fall on this. I actually have probably a little bit more optimistic of a view. I think that if we do, I think it's going to be short lived. I think there's real strengthen the consumer. I think there's um a resiliency about the American consumer and about the American spirit that we're going to see. I think we're going to

come through this. I think it's a difficult time right now, but I can feel something happening, you know, with the American consumer and with America that we're going to get this back on track in a pretty positive way. Scott, I'm really interested in the conversations that you're having with your big customers. What are these large retailers saying to you right now? You know, we're a real big staple part of their business, so as you can imagine, apparel

is extremely important to those folks. We've been partners with some of the names that you've mentioned for thirty to forty years, so we're an integral part of their apparel pad. So right now we're a really well thought of supplier. We have production for some of those folks in North America, which is really great from a just in time standpoint, so we can be very turn key for them. We're

bringing new innovations to the product. We've introduced lead to the mass channel in a pretty significant way, which has been a really big win for all of us. So we think our relationships are in a really good place as we continue to innovate and introduce new categories. We've heard about a rising inventory, specifically from Target, and I'm

wondering if you're starting to see that at your partners. Yeah, so, um, they didn't talk about apparel, you know, in the in the rising inventory, and and you know we we haven't spoken about that either. But as we mentioned on our first quarter call, our inventories that we talked about in our first quarter call, we're in good shape and looking like they're going to continue beat to be in good shape. Well, we haven't commented on that, but we will here in

a couple of weeks. Okay, I gotta try. Yeah, no problem, I want to. And by just thinking about where you see the company going in terms of innovation in the next couple of years, what are you thinking about in terms of innovation when it comes not just to style, to brand, to marketing, but also to supply chain and figuring out a way to make sure that you are

immune to future challenges here. Well, I think that UM product is always going to be the thing that you have to drive everything with when I've seen companies go off track. It's because they've gotten interested in a big acquisition that's not core, or they've done something where they've just kind of moved away from their product. If we stay focused on our products, stay focused on innovating, stay focused on our core, we have a big core business.

We're going to be just fine. And that's where we spend an incredible amount of our time. Product storytelling channel, in geography extensions, we introduced an outdoor line called Altering Gear, our work line. We just introduced a big T shirt program for both of our brands, and we just brought Wrangler to China. So as you think about those things that are core to our strategy, if we continue to do those things, we're going to be in a really

enviable place going forward. That was Scott Baxter, the president and CEO of Contour Brands, which owns Wrangler and Lee Jeans. Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week. The NBA has a plan for expanding its fan base and finding its next generation of star players in a fast growing overseas market. The details straight ahead. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the

financial capital of the world. Bloomberg eleven Trio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine to the Country Sirius XM Chamber, and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovan

on Bloomberg Radio. The NBA is spending big bucks to expand its reach overseas, and the league is now turning to a as its next major market, one that will both watch the sport and provide a pipeline of future star players into the US. Bloomberg News reporter Kim Bassen writes about the new Basketball Africa League in this week's issue. Bloomberg News West Coast correspondent Ed Ludlow and I spoke with Kim and Business Week editor Joel Webber about the initiative.

A while ago, the NBA put a huge, uh sort of priority on China and developing cultivating talent there. That culminated with with Yao and sort of created this moment where basketball got big there. But that's gotten a little rocky, which we can talk about but right now, the NBA sees Africa as its future. There's a new league that the NBA has helped set up there. This is a

talent pipeline that we're going to see. There's already kind of the storied history there, but the relationship in the sort of the pipeline wasn't quite as developed as I think it's about to become. And what Kim found here was that the NBA is all in on this. They like what it looks like. It's already has a version of success and it's only gonna get so Kim um walk us through this because there's some noteworthy investors that are also involved. This isn't just the NBA doing this

on its own. Yeah, it's called the Basketball Africa Leagues. It's twelve teams from twelve countries. This year they played games in three different places, one in Dakar, Senegal, one set in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Kegali, Rwanda. Uh. Now there's a there's a bunch of backing here. We have the Kembe Matombo, all these former players, Lull Deng, Grant Hill, Junior Bridgeman, Jokim Noah and the biggest one is former United States President Barack Obama there it is.

I had no idea that he was an investor. Yeah, he's a minority owner in the NBA Africa, which is the NBA's overall operations on the continent. Can let me jump in here and say this is surprising, Like I read your story and I thought, wow, this is a recent initiative. Why is this not happened in the past. There have been African idols in the game, right, think about Hakim or the Juee in the eighties. Why is

this just now gaining momentum, this initiative. Yeah, the NBA opened its first office in Africa in Johannesburg back in twenty ten, and that was that was a long time coming. When you go back historically, this really started. It had its roots in the in the seventies when the U. S Department of States sent over a couple of Bucks players, Koreem Abdul Jabbar and Oscar Robertson to be like American cultural diplomats in Africa. And then in the eighties, two

huge stars came out of Africa. It was Hakim La Juan and the Kemba Matumbo, And it was fascinating to me, how not seriously, these these people were taken. Like when Hakim came over on an invite from the University of Houston, they didn't send a car to pick him up at the airport. They were just like, yeah, just get just get over here, we'll see like someone recommended you. Like

and then he got out of the car. He's seven ft one and they said, oh man, uh yeah, please please come in here and shoot around with us and see how you do. Uh. So who are the sort of the architects of this We talked about the money, but but who are the big proponents of how the

b AL is shaping them? Uh? This guy named Amado Gallo Fall is the president of the b a L. He was born in Senegal and then when he was a kid, he was recommended by someone while playing in Tunisia and ended up playing Division two basketball in in d C. So he was never a pro prospect, but he stayed in the sport. He became a scout for the Mavericks and eventually ended up working for the NBA

when they opened in Africa in Johannesburg. And since then he's been doing all kinds of deal making with all these African governments to build courts and start schools and training programs. Hey Kim, what's at stake here for the NBA.

If we think about the recent history of the NBA and its efforts in China, they were looked at is really huge until just a couple of years ago when we saw that Darryl morey Uh from the Houston Rockets he voiced support for those pro Democrats protesters in Hong Kong, and that really set the league back there. Yeah, it's set them back at least three years. Right, So that happened three years ago and things that are just coming

back around. They didn't air the finals in in on Chinese state TV last year, but it looks like we're we're starting to settle back into it in China. What's at stake in Africa is a billion viewers. There's a billion potential viewers in Africa for the NBA. They want to open stores there, They're going to start in South Africa. But you can't get people to buy stuff unless they care about basketball, and that's where that's where this league

comes in. It needs to be both of something that people want to watch on television, but also a place to develop new talent that can then be ushered into other leagues like the NBA. You watched a lot of B A L basketball for this story. How how good? How good? Is it? Is it? Or? Is it? G League? Is it NT? Double A Finals? Is it NBA? What? What? How good? It's it's not it's not the NBA, but but it's it's it's quite good. It's it's it's G

League or better. That was Bloomberg News reporter Kimbassin and a Business Week editor Joel Weber Ed Ludlow joining us as well. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up. If you're looking to start a business, you'll want to stick around. Genius Guild founder and CEO Katherine Finney has got some tips, particularly for women and people of color.

This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Starting a company is tough. Luckily, Katherine Finney, the founder and CEO of Genius Gill, has some tips for aspiring entrepreneurs. You can find those in her new book. It's just out this month. It's called Build the Damn Thing. How to start a successful business if you're not a rich

white guy. Carol and I asked Katherine for some of the key highlights this weekend how she came up with the title of that book being out in you know, the talking conference circuit. I would often get entrepreneurs coming to me pitching, and they would give these really well thought out ideas and I would ask, okay, well let

me see a demo. Do you have something on your phone I could see and they would say, oh, well, I haven't quite built it yet, and they would go into all these reasons why they did, and I would say, well, just build a damn thing, Like what are you waiting for?

But that's that's like what venture capitalists or that's what I should say founders always say needs to happen, Right, You need to have this minimal viable product in order to build on it and iterate right, yes, you have to start off with something in order to get feedback.

And actually in building your minimal viable product, which is really the simplest version of your product that you can build to be able to put out into market or to show the people to get feedback, it allows you to get information, get thoughts, get feedback before spending too much money in building your product, and that's very very important.

Oftentimes founders, particularly about news you come from communities that are outside of you know, traditional communities in the startups will spend tons and tons of money tap into their four one K to build these world bust prototypes without knowing whether or not there's a market for it. And it really goes back to this concept of product market fit. Does your product have a market? Does your product have

people who want to pay for it? And so your goal with your minimal viable products is to find out this product market fit without spending a ton of money. You know, It's interesting what I love also about this book and I feel like this mirror some of the conversations.

Tim and I were just back from Dallas, Texas at the Inside conference talking with financial professionals, but diversity and inclusion came up big time, and one of our chats specifically was about how you have to have diverse investment advisors to reach out to the diverse investment public that

is out there who are increasingly being left behind. Talk to us about that when you know in terms of businesses that are being left behind, and Mark gets that are being left behind because we're not tapping into a more diverse consumer marketplace and not supporting diverse entrepreneurs who see the need for that. Yeah, I mean you're leaving money on the table, right um one, and for new entrepreneurs or Latino UM. Black women are one of the

fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs. You are leaving money on the table when you're not reaching out to these markets. This is the new future, and so it's really important to be able to understand how to reach these markets in the world of startups, how to work with these startups coming from these markets, mostly because these start ups are tapping into new areas and new opportunities for growth that you may not be able to access or even

understand if you're not part of those communities. So by investing in them and by getting to know these amazing founders, you're actually giving yourself more diversification within your own portfolio. All Right. I want to be provocative because I love that you lay it out there and thanks to kind of sharing some materials with us. You talk about army leaders with responses to investors who have told her, quote, great pitch, but I just don't do black women. I

mean that happens. That's a reality, right, it happened to me. We'll tell us, all right, so tell us about that. Well, I think you know, and it's been well documented Inventor Capital about the pattern matching right of this idea of because every successful founder I've invested in was, you know, a twenty five year old white guy from Stanford. That means that every successful founder is going to be a

twenty five year o white guy from Stanford. Um, what is interesting about that is the inherent fallacy, which is it also means that all you're failed investments also came from twenty five year o white guys from Stanford. And so what happens is when someone like myself for woman, or a diverse entrepreneurs shows up, it's kind of like, you know, this anomaly, like, oh my gosh, you're here. And so we often find, you know, in the our meeting, we get with a potential investor that minutes of that

it's just explaining how we got into the door. They're so fascinated by us in our history that we only get about fifteen minutes to actually talk about our business, which is what we're there to talk about. And so it becomes really hard to be able to pitch when people don't see you as a business or they completely

don't understand the business opportunity. And no matter what you say, no matter what type of data you have, your metrics, the total addressable market, you know, all those great things that you know investors say they love to hear, they don't hear it because they're so sort of distracted by you and your presence and so, and that definitely happens.

I think as a diverse entrepreneur, though, the goal is always to redirect right, Right, Catherine, I want to get to Chicago here and talk a little bit about venture capital in Chicago, because when we think about VC, it's so often in the context of California, and you mentioned that, you know, twenty five year old white guy Stanford grad as being sort of the archetypal tech founder, or we

talked about in the context of New York. What are would you say that venture capitalists who are isolated to those areas of the country miss out by not being

in Chicago. You miss out a new opportunities in new markets, right, And there's a lot of VC firms now they're starting to pay attention not just genius gild and what we're doing here, but also you know, Steve Case and Revolution and Rise of the Rest has been for several years going around sort of middle America outside of the coast and investing heavily in amazing startups in these sort of places, and so there's a lot of opportunities. A lot of

great companies are coming out. There's a lot of cybertech companies here who are particularly in Chicago, who are salving CyberSolutions. There's a number of companies around food in the future of food that are also in sort of the Midwest region, which is also very interesting, and it kind of makes

sense because we're the bread basket of America. But there's a lot of emerging opportunities here that I think people tend to overlook because again we're in the middle of America and and sort of people are not coming here to see. But I welcome everyone that comes to Chicago and see what we have here. We are the founders that you invested in, or at least that are pitching to you, because you're not, of course investing in every founder that's pitching to you. What are their backgrounds typically

and are they coming out of school, university. Are they coming from established firms? What's a typical startup founder who's looking for funding from you? Yeah, and so our founders have really strong domain knowledge and experience and what they're abuilding. Um. So, one of our companies, health in her Hugh's kind of WebMD for black women in's experienced enormous growth over the

past couple of years. Was founded by a black woman with a public health degree who also happens to be what I have to which is a public health degree as an epidemiologist. We have founders who have working in the creator economy who also were creators themselves or worked in the agency side, so they have experience working with

creators and understanding the opportunities there. We have companies that are working in supplier diversity chains and the supply chain diversifying that who have tons of experience working in the supply chain. And we also have invested in a couple of other funds as well. There also are led by general partners who have experienced either in the sectors that they're investing in and or coming from really top nodge venture funds. I have to first ask you what is

it about Voldemort? Because Tim O'Brien of our team, our opinion team has quoted tweeted out a picture of him in connection with pardoning and then I love in your book that says you've gone from standing up to the Voldemort's venture capital to leading around multimillion dollar fund. I mean, was it that bad? I mean, that's very hardy Potter and been terrified by the evil villain Voldemort. Like that's terrible.

It was that bad. And I talked about in the book you know what it was like in the early two thousand's, and I think some of us kind of forget because it's so long ago, but there really was not very many women, and definitely not very many women of color, and so it was this atmosphere where people didn't have just low expectations, they had no expectations of me. And being a lifelong overachievermer, that was incredibly difficult for me to be in a situation where people didn't think

I just couldn't do it. And so I had to develop tools and they had to develop ways in want you to get around that and a lot of those ways I share in the book I love it you do. It's really great how to and really working people walking people through all of the processes to our procedures to build their own successful business. It's interesting to you know, Ventu Capital and you know, like you said, it's this

isn't a new story. We've written about it a lot of Bloomberg, but even like women venture capitalists not investing in women led companies. And I find it funny because we just talked with Tory Birch Embrace Ambition. She also has been about specifically providing money for female entrepreneur What is it about, though, that women in Silicon Valley weren't backing other women? Was it just the pressure of the firm. Well,

there's almost a tax that you pay. So if you're a woman investor and you invest in women, there's almost like a tax that you pay that perhaps you're not able to spot great investments, right, but the understanding thing that women are not great investments, right, And so it's almost a tax that is for any VC who falls outside of the norm that if you tend to over index your investments in whatever group that you identify with,

that somehow you're creating favoritism, somehow you're not investing in them because you see opportunities that you're somehow not as great of an investor, and that's actually documented, and so that penalty is true, and that causes marginalized investors so sometimes not invest as much as they would and the groups that they understand in the markets that they understand. That was Katherine Finney. She's founder and CEO of Genius

Guild and her book is out now. It's called Build the Damn Thing, How to Start a successful Business if You're not a rich white guy. That wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Tim Stanabek. Carol Masser will be back next week. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch

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